As the poet once said, there is time for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
Even though it’s a poll that’s reliably favorable to Kamala Harris, the latest NPR/Marist College survey of voters in the “blue wall” states does indicate that the vice president has managed to repair her deficit of trust among voters when it comes to the economy.
Via the Harris campaign:
PA: Even on the economy, 19 point shift among independents to Harris
MI: Even on the economy, Harris leads with independents, women.
WI: Harris leads among independents, closed gap on Econ, up huge with women https://t.co/nLqloSEK5G
— James Singer (@Jemsinger) November 1, 2024
Semafor’s David Weigel attributed the shift to the campaign’s paid media push, which has been “just grinding on this economic message (anti-price gouging, Medicare covering home care, etc.) for months as different shiny objects hit the news cycle.” He’s not the only political observer who has noticed that voters’ outlook toward Harris regarding the economy has improved in recent weeks.
“In a September Times/Siena poll, likely voters favored Mr. Trump’s handling of the economy by 13 percentage points; that lead had shrunk to just six percentage points in the latest Times/Siena poll, which was conducted last week,” the New York Times reported on Wednesday. “Other pollsters have shown similar gains for the vice president on the issue.”
Time magazine agrees. “To be fair, Democrats are not suddenly crushing the economy question,” reporter Philip Elliott conceded. And yet, “Republicans’ advantage on the top issue for most voters has declined as they face Kamala Harris at the top of the ticket.”
Right after Biden bowed out, the center-left pollsters Redfield and Wilton found Trump leading Harris on the economy in the seven core swing states, Trump showed to be anywhere from six points ahead on that question in Michigan to 13 points in Pennsylvania. These days, they find Harris is favored on the economy in three of those states and tied in another two. To be clear, the advantages found in these slightly blue-tinged polls range from 4 points up in Wisconsin, 1 point up in Georgia and Nevada, and tied in Michigan and North Carolina—all within the margin of error. But in states like Georgia, Nevada, and Pennsylvania, we’re talking about a double-digit swing in her favor.
Yes, yes. But there is time for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse, to borrow the phrase. In this case, those revisions may be downward modifications to the jobs numbers.
As Dominic wrote this morning, the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics report on October’s employment statistics was abysmal. Only about 12,000 jobs were created this month, and the estimated number of new hires in September and August was revised downward by a total of 112,000 jobs. Indeed, private sector payrolls contracted this month. Which is to say that, if it wasn’t for new government jobs, the U.S. would have seen negative job growth in October.
The news highlights the shocking revelation in August that the U.S. economy added 818,000 fewer jobs to the economy between April 2023 and March 2024 than originally thought. Once again, it was the private sector — broad categories that include professional services, hospitality, and leisure — that really took it on the chin.
The weakness in this month’s jobs report has been attributed to weather-related disruptions and a labor dispute at American ports that briefly disrupted commerce in early October. Fine. Stipulated. But that doesn’t exculpate the Biden administration, which all but encouraged the strike and managed only to postpone it until after the election.
The jobs numbers may not play a big role in the coming election. The unemployment rate remains stable at 4 percent. And when voters say their primary election-year issue is the economy, they mean inflation and the failure of wages to keep pace with consumer prices. That suggests voters’ perceptions of what constitutes “the economy” are fairly broad. If voters in the battleground states were starting to warm to Harris’s economic message, a bad-news dump on the eve of the election that reminds voters how much they hate the economy over which Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have presided can’t advance her political prospects much.